


For you

by Tyelperintal



Series: Things that fall [2]
Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Gratuitous expensive fabric references, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, joseon era, kim youngjo | ravn is whipped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyelperintal/pseuds/Tyelperintal
Summary: Youngjo returns from a journey abroad. Hwanwoong is waiting for him. More Joseon Era AU.
Relationships: Kim Youngjo | Ravn/Yeo Hwanwoong
Series: Things that fall [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668757
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	For you

Youngjo arrives at the palace ahead of the rest of his travelling party, with only a thin crescent moon to light the way ahead of him. Black silk, a black horse, black hair, a black night; he knows why he can hear the restless guards reaching for their swords at his approach.

“It’s only me,” he announces as he dismounts.

It’s a guess, based on living for years and years behind the vibrantly painted walls, that whoever has taken the post at the south gate will recognize him by his voice. The young champion Seoho likes to attend to his duties at night so he can steal a few hours’ play during the day, Youngjo knows, and Geonhak always seems happy to oblige and indulge that practice. It isn’t even wholly unreasonable—night, in theory, is the more treacherous time. One in need of someone with greater skill and self-control.

“Ah … Youngjo?”

The gamble has paid off, Youngjo sees, or rather _hears_ —that’s Seoho. It doesn’t escape him the way that the younger man speaks a little carefully around his name, still uncertain whether he ought to be using a royal title instead or in addition.

“The weather was favorable. I’m early,” Youngjo explains. There are a few important things stowed in the saddlebag, and Youngjo busies himself with the straps so he can carry it inside with him.

“This is early to you?” Seoho laughs. It’s too dark to see, but Youngjo is familiar with the way his eyes crease in amusement when he laughs or smiles. Oddly enough, it’s infectious even when he can’t see it, and Youngjo finds the corners of his mouth twitching up too as he finally frees the saddlebag from its bindings.

“Were you not the one that was recently telling me that time isn’t real?” he counters. Turning with the horse’s rein in one hand and the saddlebag in the other, he observes the fellow guard with Seoho, who politely hangs back as they converse. “Would one of you tend to my horse? I am…” 

Seoho clicks his tongue in mock disappointment, but he accepts the reins into his own hand. “You’ll owe me a favor for this.”

“Already repaid,” Youngjo answers, raising the saddlebag slightly. Its precious cargo is all gifts from the markets in Kyoto, but here in the dark is not the place to sort through it. “Find me in the morning.”

~*~

The fact is that Youngjo’s quarters are far nicer than what he feels he deserves—he’s not a prince himself, just a commoner’s son, and so the extra rooms are a luxury that might better serve someone else. A dozen times opening these doors, and it’s still with a pang of guilt and a glance over his shoulder, as if he expects to see someone seething with resentment over the advantages he has.

There’s no one, at this hour—

But when he steps inside and seals the door behind him again, he realizes he’s being greeted with the orange glow of paper lanterns from the next room, illuminating the wood paneling and painted silk screens. A lingering trace of perfumed incense adds to the warmth, too, and Youngjo can’t help but inhale it.

It doesn’t take more than a second to rule out the possibility of an assailant. They’d be a fool to announce their presence so shamelessly.

Somehow the word ‘shameless’ brings to mind…

“Don’t just stand there,” a protest comes drifting in, cutting like a winter wind.

“Yeo Hwanwoong.” When Youngjo answers, he means it to sound scolding, but he can hear himself how terribly he misses the mark, how easily his tone dissolves into jasmine and honey.

The saddlebag is still clenched in his hand, and Youngjo sets it on the floor next to him while he slips out of his travelling coat and hat, struggles out of his muddied boots so he won’t bring the grit of the road into the comfort of the home he’s been missing for the last few months. His haste nearly makes him trip, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by his intruder judging by the poorly concealed snicker he hears. 

“How did you know I was coming tonight?” Youngjo asks once he’s shed a few layers of clothing, bare feet now touching the wood paneled floor. Part of him aches for a bath right now, to soak away the sweat and dirt from the road, but it’s too late to make the effort. He half suspects he would drown in the bathhouse if he made the attempt now.

“I know everything,” Hwanwoong answers.

He’s perched—yes, s _hamelessly_ —on top of Youngjo’s bed, a brocade robe in shades of blossom pink and spring green wrapped around his body. His hands idly toy with a painted silk fan, flipping it open and closed, while he observes Youngjo with one slightly raised eyebrow.

There’s nothing inviting about the look, but this is Youngjo’s room, and Youngjo’s bed. He makes his way closer, gives Hwanwoong’s shoulder a gentle shove, and crawls into place next to him. Hwanwoong makes an exaggerated point of leaning away at first. But then he gives in and lets Youngjo wrap himself around him.

“I missed you,” Youngjo confesses, squirming so that he can press his nose against the crook of Hwanwoong’s neck where it meets his shoulder. He smells like the flowers embroidered on his robe; inviting, soft.

“You smell like a horse,” Hwanwoong answers quietly. It’s followed by a bell-like laugh—but he’s discarding the fan unceremoniously to the floor, and his fingers find their way to Youngjo’s hair instead. “How was Japan?”

“Beautiful,” Youngjo answers, eyes fluttering closed. “I think it made up for the seasickness on the way there. And the pirates.”

He feels Hwanwoong’s body tense next to him. “Pirates?”

“They left us alone, but I’m concerned. I’ll speak to Geonhak about it…”

In theory, that should mean Hwanwoong should not be the first to hear about it. But they’ve always worked that way; Youngjo reports to Geonhak, but Hwanwoong is his eyes and ears, his informant and his confidante in places Youngjo cannot be. A favor, initially …

Hwanwoong had been barely sixteen years old when he’d come to Youngjo the first time and asked for help, years and years ago. His father, an estate owner, was dead of an infection, and his mother and elder sister had taken up the management of their holdings alongside his mother’s new lover. Perhaps Hwanwoong had been old enough to pick up the responsibility himself, if he had wanted, but therein was some of the conflict.

“I want to dance,” he’d told Youngjo in a shaded corner of the palace courtyard. “And to sing. But it’s a slave’s job. My family would be ashamed of me.”

Maybe there had been an insult coded in there, because if anyone would know about families and shame, it would be the king’s illegitimate son born off a servant, whose shadow did nothing but taint the true and golden heir.

“I can help,” Youngjo had promised anyway, and learned to pull the right strings to give Hwanwoong the opportunity he wanted. Yes, there were whispered words and raised eyebrows, but Geonhak’s eventual support had done much to quiet them.

Youngjo hums, and gives in to the temptation to kiss the point of skin along the edge of Hwanwoong’s brocade garment. He feels Hwanwoong’s fingers briefly tighten around a strand of his hair, and he kisses again, open-mouthed this time. “’m tired… can we…?”

“You should bathe first.”

“You’re cruel.”

“And you smell like you belong in a stable.” Hwanwoong arches his neck, and lets Youngjo kiss there again.

It’s easy to push the pink brocade away from his shoulders, Youngjo finds, to expose another patch of skin to run his fingers across. This time his efforts earn him a breathy exhale from Hwanwoong. “Is this alright?”

“Yes. It’s alright.” Hwanwoong’s hand leaves Youngjo’s hair, sliding down to the back of his neck to pull him in for a real kiss this time.

~*~

It’s past dawn when Youngjo awakens, Hwanwoong curled next to his side and snoring quietly. The paper lanterns from last night have flickered out, so the soft grey glow of light is from the sun poking above the horizon and the palace walls.

Dimly, Youngjo recalls that he’d told Seoho last night to seek him out in the morning, and it’s not out of the realm of the boy’s eccentricities to let himself in here to wake Youngjo up himself and demand to see his gifts as soon as there is light in the sky to seem them with. And normally, Youngjo wouldn’t mind that—but he’d like to be more clothed, if it’s to happen.

Carefully, he extricates himself from Hwanwoong, then chooses between the discarded clothes on the floor (travel-stained though they are) and a clean but threadbare shirt from an old wooden chest on the side of the room. He still aches from days on end of travel, and though there are polished mirrors lying on more than one surface between this room and the next, Youngjo refuses to pick one up to see the state he’s in. He can well imagine; disheveled hair, bruises on his skin, stale sweat. It’s not pretty; Hwanwoong is a treasure to have put up with him.

The saddlebag is still on the floor where Youngjo had left it last night. He pads over to retrieve it, and carries it over to the writing desk off to one side of the room to sort through the contents.

For now, he retrieves a small box of red and gold lacquer, and a bright silver pendant with a tiger passant in a circular field. They go together—the lacquer box contains a perfume that is sweet, but bold, not unlike the pretty image of the tiger.

By the time he returns to the bed, Hwanwoong has disappeared under the coverlet, his small frame almost completely absorbed by the cloth. Youngjo gives him a gentle warning nudge, then clambers on top of him again, careful not to drop his gifts.

“I have something for you,” he chirps, feeling more awake with each minute that passes.

It’s clearly not a sentiment that Hwanwoong shares, because the only response he gets is a muffled groan and a twisting of blankets that suggest he is attempting to burrow further inside of them.

But after a few more seconds of poking and prodding, Hwanwoong grudgingly emerges, blinking the sleep away and running a hand through his own unkempt brown hair. “What’s this?”

“Something to distract you until I can have a bath,” Youngjo answers as he navigates the lacquered perfume box into Hwanwoong’s hands. “I bought it in a market in Kyoto. A popular choice of one of their most famous _geisha_.”

Hwanwoong still looks bleary eyed from the loss of sleep, but there’s a little smile already peeking through at the corners of his mouth. “You thought of me?”

“Always,” Youngjo affirms.

The tiger pendant is affixed to a small length of thin silk ribbon, and that he passes to Hwanwoong too. He watches the younger man inspect the design, and there—it’s like the sun breaching through on a cloudy day when the smile fully emerges, or else it’s a spring shower on the winter-dry ground. Like this, he's ... 

He's beautiful enough that Youngjo sometimes doubts why Hwanwoong tolerates him. 

Hwanwoong's eyes flicker from side to side as he ponders something. “Do they have tigers in Kyoto?”

“They had this one, but now I’ve taken it away and brought it to you.” Hwanwoong aims a kick at Youngjo from under the coverlet, and Youngjo laughs. “I’ll tell you about everything I saw later—tigers or not—but I want to bathe first. Ah, and if Seoho comes in here, don’t tell him where I went, yes?”

He can see the confusion present in Hwanwoong’s gaze. But that, like the tigers, will also have to wait for explication.

**Author's Note:**

> Hwanwoong is actually the name of a Korean god, but that's beyond the scope of this AU, so I'm not using the name as a point of reference like I did for the other boys :') 
> 
> His role here is (very) loosely based off the kisaeng, who were female entertainers from lower classes who would entertain the nobility with songs and dances. I wanted to keep his love of dancing intact for this AU and this seemed like the best way to do it, but I'm taking some massive historical liberties to try and make it work in a way that isn't too *questionable*, so I apologize for that. 
> 
> Also ... Hwanjo may not end up being the endgame ship here. Or maybe different fics are AUs of my own AU, but in any case I have Hwanhee, Seojo, and Seodo oneshots planned. Comment if there's a particular one you'd like to see next!


End file.
